If you peruse the news on any given day, the farm bill/food stamp debate produces two general impressions: Republicans are heartless turkey thieves; Democrats are spendthrift welfare caterers. If only neither were a little bit right.

Let’s recap: If you like your insurance policy, you can keep it. No, wait. If you liked your policy, it was probably worthless anyway. Scratch that. If your junk policy was canceled and you still want it, you can keep it. Er, get it back.

Here we are in the midst of a bloody clash in Egypt, more than 100,000 slaughtered in Syria, another looming debt crisis at home, and we’re consumed with angst over a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask and invited the crowd to cheer for the bulls.

I like Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis. I admire her intelligence, chutzpah, tenacity and, to be perfectly honest, her enviable continence.

But her elevation to national heroine, essentially owing to her ability to speak for 11 hours straight without a break while wearing (how many times did we hear or read it?) “rouge-red sneakers,” is absurd.

When it comes to knock-knock jokes, it helps to be 5 years old: You can slap your head, roll your eyes, and run outside and play.

In a courtroom where the defendant is charged with second-degree murder, a knock-knock joke has all the appeal of a bar of soap on the shower floor.

It is difficult to imagine how Don West, defense attorney in the trial of George Zimmerman, the man accused of killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, worked through the thought process that led him to slap his own forehead and say to himself: